Landlady: Pay, Big Spender

Landlady Towers is undergoing the equivalent of a full beauty makeover at great cost to yours truly. It’s having a full back, sack and crack (crack being the operative word as far as the walls are concerned), and a hefty dose of Botox – although I do hope the decorators will not be injecting the walls with poison. The downstairs hallway is being transformed into what will look like an extremely swanky hotel lobby, the woodchip finally being replaced with eye-wateringly expensive Matthew Williamson wallpaper. No doubt it will within months, be trampled into tatters by my trio of heavy-footed male lodgers. Mind you, it’s their rent that’s paying the bill, so I suppose I shouldn’t really complain.

The makeover is about halfway through and I’m very much looking forward to it all being over as, no matter how much you like your decorators (they’re actually good friends), there is no price for having your own space. Having friends around all the time, working their butts off, makes me feel deeply guilty. And, on a rare day off, makes lying down in the living room with a cream horn and Jeremy Kyle a virtual impossibility when they can see me through the windows.

No doubt it will within months, be trampled into tatters

Luckily, The Cuban has spent the past three weeks in Cuba, as it would’ve been impossible to have our usual lie-ins with my friend B laboriously burning the paint off my bedroom windows at the crack of dawn. Although the sound of the paint-burner might usefully mask the sound of the snoring. His, not mine.

As luck would have it, I won’t be around for the whole of April, as I’m off to Cuba with The Small Daughter on Thursday, will be back for a day in the middle of April and will then be going to Turkey for the rest of the month. I’d just packed my case when The Cuban called on a crackly, long-distance line asking me to bring a plethora of things to Cuba, some of which will require a trip to Halfords, the mere thought of which brings me out in hives. Well, it’s not very lady-like is it? In these days of gender self-identification, I’ve had a good check and I’m definitely a woman. At least I can comfort myself with the fact that, these days, I know where to purchase the best cream horn in Havana. And woe betide anyone who stops me trying to eat it in peace.